Thursday, January 21, 2016

An Interview with UMass Lowell Chancellor Jacqueline Moloney

Nicole Lynch
Center For Women and Work
University of Massachusetts Lowell

Jacqueline Moloney is the newly-appointed chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Lowell—the first woman chancellor of this university. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Chancellor Moloney on behalf of the Center for Women & Work near the end of her first 90 days. She enlightened me about her professional career and her goals and beliefs as chancellor of UMass Lowell. 
Photo courtesy of Madelyn Robinson, an Art major here at UMass Lowell.
Chancellor Moloney shared that she feels strongly connected to her identity as a woman and its social and political implications. 
“I have always said that women are the best part of my life. I’ve been very fortunate to be in a large family of women,” said Chancellor Moloney. “Unfortunately, they grew up at a time when, especially for my older sisters, college was not an option for them. They should have gone to college and they never had that opportunity. But they were smart and they pushed all of us.”

Chancellor Moloney added that she was fortunate that when it came time for her to attend college, the feminist movement was coming to life and she had the opportunity to attend UMass Lowell. “I think that absolutely, fundamentally changed my life forever. There were a lot of strong women here who reached down to me as an undergrad, like you, and said, ‘You can be everything you want to be.’ I was just so lucky to have that experience.” 

The chancellor and I also share the experience of belonging to feminist groups on campus. I’m the vice president of a club called F.R.E.E. (Feminism Represents Equality for Everyone) and Chancellor Moloney started the first women’s center at UMass Lowell. She stated: “If I wasn’t a woman, I wouldn’t have gotten to know all of those great women who challenged me, stretched me and taught me to keep going. I think, going forward, I’ve been lucky to have wonderful colleagues who are women and who feel it’s our duty to support each other and to lift us all up collectively.”


“I would put myself in (Sandberg’s) parents’ generation, let me just say that. So I’m not sure that works for women of that generation. There was no ladder. There was no ladder for me. There was no ladder for her mother, I’m sure. I came up through the ranks and I was the only woman in the room just about all of the time. I had to find my own path and I think that was true for most women.”


Chancellor Moloney gave me a book, Mary Catherine Bateson’s Composing a Life. The author, she explained, “talks about how women compose a life. By the nature of who we are and how our lives are organized, we have to compose a life like composing a symphony, where you have to think about the best use of the instruments when you bring them in. You frame it in terms of what your skills are and what your strength is right now as a woman.”


Chancellor Moloney faced critical points in her career when she had to make choices, the biggest of which was to take a break and have children.“It was a big deal and so I chose—but that was part of composing a life,” she said. “I had great confidence that if I followed my passions then it would work out. And it always did for me.” 

She described how, when she was staying home to care for her children, she found other ways to pursue her interests. “We started a women’s conference in Lowell called Womenergy. So I didn’t have to let go of my passions, I just did it in a different way.”


“We provide a very unique education to our students.” She said “There’s no better way for you to stretch your mind than to not just read about a policy, learn a policy, but to really understand it in an applied way.”
As an undergraduate at UMass Lowell, she majored in sociology, a course of study that changed her thinking about some things and taught her “that it is your responsibility to go out and make this world a better place.”

Since Chancellor Moloney started her career as a social worker and director of nonprofits in Lowell, she knows “the power of you, and you, and unleashing that power.”

As chancellor, she wants to stress applied learning by students because “it’s really about students who are making a difference, applying their learning and making a difference” and that the university will continue to create opportunities for students to pursue applied learning.
Additionally, Moloney wants to focus on “how we tell our story” as a university because she believes that “we are changing the world through teaching, research and service” and she wants to “empower students and faculty to make a difference.”

By interviewing Chancellor Jacqueline Moloney, I learned that she has succeeded in composing a life that is uniquely her own. She was involved in the community through direct work with disadvantaged populations. She gave back, in incredible ways, to the university at which she completed her undergraduate and doctoral degrees and where she worked for many years in a variety of roles, so much so that the previous chancellor asked her to be his second in command. She has served and continues to serve on the boards of multiple community-focused organizations and has been involved in grassroots community organizing. She’s a staunch feminist as well as a mother and grandmother. And, most important for the future of this university, she has carried her community focus with her in her appointment as chancellor. Chancellor Moloney knows the value of community work through direct experience and she believes wholeheartedly in affording students the opportunities to learn that value for themselves.



I asked the chancellor if she was familiar with the book, Lean In and author Sheryl Sandberg’s theories that careers are like a ladder or a jungle gym (one is straight up the career ladder, one is made up of varied professional experiences). 

As Chancellor, Jacqueline Moloney holds the belief that education should include applied learning and together, students learn skills they can use to make the world a better place. 

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Spring Semester Jobs for FAHHS Students

Event & Capacity Building Assistant - The Lawrence Partnership is looking for an intern to help with a variety of project based and administrative tasks as they plan events, implement new initiatives and grow capacity.  After finishing their strategic plan in the fall they will be hosted two large regional events at the same time.  The intern will be deeply involved in some of the logistics, marketing, and leg work associated with preparing for these events.  Additionally, ongoing social media exposure for the Partnership and the City of Lawrence will be built into the internship and potentially the opportunity to do some on the ground marketing and research with local business owners.  (can work some hours remotely)

Event/Communications Intern –  CASE/COOL (Cultural Affairs & Special Events and Cultural Organization of Lowell) are looking for an intern excited to gain exposure and expertise in the fields of nonprofit art and culture communications & marketing. Under the general direction of COOL’s staff, the inter will assist in planning and developing marketing communications to support city-wide cultural events in Lowell.  Duties include, event support (including some evenings & weekends), managing PR binder, updating community calendar listings, creating the COOL Eblast, designing flyers and marketing materials, and general marketing distribution in partnership with COOL’s volunteers.

COOL Place Team Member –  CASE/COOL (Cultural Affairs & Special Events and Cultural Organization of Lowell) are looking for two interns to work at their mobile booths called The COOL Place which will sell locally made items to customers and/or distribute information about arts & culture in the city.  Interns will be responsible for supporting: scheduling the booth at local office buildings, farmers markets, etc., the inventory and acquisition of artists products as well as marketing, sales and promotions. 

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Winter Internship Opportunity


Dear Students:

In case you were unaware, the “great” state of New Hampshire, our neighbor to the north, holds the first in the nation presidential primary on February 4th, 2016. These campaigns are looking for young people to work unpaid in the time between just after Christmas and the beginning of classes. This is a fantastic opportunity given our close location to Nashua and the fact that most of you already possess clothing that can survive a New England winter. They will generally feed and house you, but you won’t be paid.

I don’t want to sugarcoat this: you will be a grunt. You will knock doors, make phone calls, set up events, make coffee, go on bagel runs, and talk at length with annoying people about meaningless things. You will do this for 12-15 hours a day. You will also make (if you go into politics as a career) some of the best connections of your life. People move up the ranks quickly in campaign politics; people who were interns 12 and 16 years ago are managing presidential campaigns now.  

You can get credit for this course in the intersession with me as a directed reading, which you can later use as a 400-level political science credit. 

Here’s what you’ll need to produce (if you want to enroll in the directed reading and get credit):
  1. 100+ hours of work in service to the campaign. You’ll need your supervisor to sign a letter confirming this.
  2. A five-page “reflection paper” on your experience. I will provide a detailed prompt for you.
  3. You’ll need to keep a journal if possible during your experience.   
I already have reached out to several of the presidential campaigns and have materials from them. If you are interested, email me with your name, the candidate you would like to work for, and whether you want to enroll in the directed reading or not. I will do my best to facilitate these opportunities for you.

Thanks so much,
John

John Cluverius
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Research Fellow, Center for Public Opinion
University of Massachusetts Lowell
office: 978-934-5380
John_Cluverius@uml.edu


Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Youth Villages Job Opportunity

What is Youth Villages?

A national leader in children's behavioral health, Youth Villages has helped troubled children and their families find success for more than 25 years now. Their Evidentiary Family Restoration approach consistently produces lasting success for children. Utilized in a comprehensive array of programs and services, the approach involves intensive work with the child and family, a focus on measuring outcomes, keeping children in the community whenever safely possible, and providing accountability to families and funders.

Positions Available

If you are looking in a career for helping children, families and youth meet the challenges of living successfully at home and in their communities, then Youth Villages is the place for you. Youth Villages has community-based programs throughout Massachusetts.  In each program, the goal is to serve at-risk youth and families in their communities. Counselors work with youth of all ages, providing high-level mental health treatment. Youth Villages prides itself on its effective intensive in-home therapy, small caseloads and flexible schedules. 

Prerequisites

  • ​BA or MA degree in social services
  • experience working with at-risk youth
  • ability to be flexible
  • leadership experiences
  • high level of professionalism
  • desire to help children and families succeed

Contact -  Alicia Salerno

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Student-Scholar Partnership Program 2015-2016

The goal of the Sociology Department Student-Scholar Partnership Program is to create an opportunity for students and faculty to work together on research projects. The goal is twofold – to provide students and recent alums with meaningful experience working on sociological research projects and to provide some collaborative assistance to faculty scholarship.

To be eligible to apply you must be a current Sociology major or a recent graduate of the Sociology Department, and you must have completed at least one course in Social Theory and one course in Sociological Research by the end of Fall 2015. Selected participants will receive $500 for 50 hours of work during the Spring 2016 semester.

Selected students will commit to:
1.     Complete a partnership contract and submit to the Chair by January 29, 2015.
2.     Meet weekly or biweekly with your faculty partner during the academic semester to review progress and discuss short-term goals.
3.     Fill out a biweekly log documenting hours spent working on project and/or in meetings about project.
4.     Meet periodically with other participants to provide mutual support and guidance.
5.     Prepare a presentation of the research for a forum open to students and faculty.
6.     Prepare a poster for the Undergraduate Research Symposium in April.

To apply:
1)    For each project you wish to apply to, write a short (2-3 paragraph) summary of why you would like to be involved and why your skills and interests are a good fit for the goals of the project. If you plan to apply for more than one project please be sure to write this summary for each. Save this document as a PDF file.
2)    Choose a writing sample of about 5 pages (from a class paper or something else you have previously written without collaborators) and save as a PDF file.
3)    Save your unofficial transcript as a PDF file.
4)    Send these three documents to mignon_duffy@uml.edu by November 15, 2015.

If you are chosen as a finalist you will be asked to schedule an interview with the faculty member whose project you are applying for.

2015-2016 Student-Scholar Partnership Opportunities:



Increasing Gender Inclusivity in Faculty Members’ Teamwork Practices
Prof. Kacey Beddoes

The low numbers of women in engineering remains a concern, and prior research on students’ experiences demonstrates that classroom experiences and interactions with other students and faculty disproportionately cause negative experiences for female and other minority students and lead to attrition from engineering programs. For a variety of reasons, teamwork is one component of engineering education frequently experienced differently by women and other minority students than by male students. Given that teamwork is of central and increasing importance, it is vital that faculty members understand how to maximize gender inclusivity of their teamwork components. This Student-Scholar Partnership will contribute to that outcome through creation of training tools for engineering faculty members. 

The student will: 1) help create an online training tool for faculty members, and 2) help plan a workshop that utilizes the tool. The student will have the opportunity to be part of an interdisciplinary group of researchers and faculty development experts working on a product with real-world impact. Additionally, the student will also have the opportunity to be part of the new Research In Sociology of Engineering group as that is put in place over the course of this year. The student will thus become part of an institutionalized group in which they can continue to participate at the end of the Partnership, if they choose.

The student should: 1) have an interest in gender and diversity; 2) have word processing and internet research skills; 3) be responsible, proactive, and organized; and 4) be detail-oriented.



The DREAM Generation: The Emergence of the Student Immigrant Movement (SIM) in Massachusetts 
Prof. Thomas PiƱeros Shields

Immigration remains one of the most hotly debated policy and social issues of our time.  In particular, there are approximately two million unauthorized immigrants who entered the United States as children and attended public high schools but have little to no way to normalize their citizenship status.   Through an in-depth ethnography of a social movement organization, the Student Immigrant Movement (SIM), my doctoral dissertation explained how these undocumented immigrant students emerged as political social movement actors between 2006 and 2012 to become known as “DREAMers.”  Today DREAMers are included among central actors in the field of immigrant rights movement, and are invited into public debates around stats and federal policies of immigrant inclusion and exclusion.  The current project will extend this project since the passage of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that provided a temporary and conditional legal status to undocumented immigrants.
Specifically, this project is part of a book prospectus that explains how undocumented immigrant students emerged as political actors in Massachusetts.   In this book, I expand upon the presence of both organizational factors and opportunities/threats by defining the emergence of undocumented immigrants as an interactive process of self-definition in relationship to previous generations of immigrants.  This research contributes to scholarship and extends the concept of the ‘political generation’ that has been used by social movement scholars (McAdam 1982; Whittier 1997; Braungart 2013) to explain the emergence of “Freedom Riders” and other 1960’s-era social movement actors.
The project is a mixed-method study that includes further analysis of existing ethnographic data and interviews, quantitative analysis of demographic data, and an analysis of media representations.   Specifically, over the next several months, as part of this project I will:
1.              Write a chapter/article that analyzes American Community Survey (ACS) data from the U.S. Census Bureau to explain the demographic evolution of the “DREAM Generation” from the late 1990’s to today.   This chapter establishes a demographic context for DREAMers as a “political generation.” 
2.              As part of another chapter/article, identify patterns of public discourse around DREAMers through an analysis of media representations of these actors with the strategic action field from 2001 to 2015 (Fligstein and McAdam 2012). 
3.              Interview allies and other adult members of the immigrant rights movement, members of the media and policy makers to map the strategic action field of DREAMers in Massachusetts.
4.              Interview current members of the Student Immigrant Movement (SIM) to explain the evolution of SIM since the passage of DACA, as a new conclusion to the text.
5.              Conduct a comparative narrative analysis of DREAMers with U.S.-born citizen children of undocumented immigrants that have been labeled “anchor babies.”  This final part of the project depends upon approval of previously collected interview data by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the Protection of Human Subjects.
While these projects are part of a book, portions might also be used as separate articles.
Possible tasks for student involvement and skills desired in a student partner.
While the actual tasks for students will be developed after meeting the student, possible project activities include:
1.              Organizing and inventorying media files about the Student Immigrant Movement (SIM) chronologically, and then coding these files thematically around the evolution of the portrayal of “DREAMers.”   The student might begin with the several boxes and drawers of newspaper clippings in my office and then collect articles from online search of relevant publications and newswires. This contributes to my analysis of strategic action fields for DREAMers.
2.              Coding (or re-coding) existing interview transcripts using Atlas.ti or NVivo.
3.              Developing new protocols for research interviews with undocumented immigrant students, allies and adult members of the immigrant rights movement.
4.              Depending on student skill, ability and interests, attending interviews of current SIM members and/or adult allies with me to collect data.
5.              Depending on student skill/ability, cleaning data files from ACS in SPSS and conducting preliminary frequency and cross-tabulations.  


Global Care – What Difference Does Policy Make?
Prof. Mignon Duffy
My research focuses on care work, the labor at the center of the societal imperative to care for those who are dependent because of youth, age, illness, or disability. In particular, I am interested in paid care workers, a group I define broadly to include health care workers (such as nursing aides, home health aides, doctors, and nurses), social services and mental health care providers (such as social workers, therapists, group home workers), teachers, and child care workers. The social organization of care in the United States today is problematic for both the workers who labor in the care sector and for the recipients of care and their families. We all know stories of parents who cannot pay for child care, people who cannot find the mental health care they need, and nursing shortages in hospitals. And care workers like nursing assistants and child care workers are among the lowest paid in the labor market, and have often been denied many basic labor protections.
My previous research has been almost exclusively focused on analyzing the shape of the paid care labor force in the United States in order to better understand the roots of these social problems. I have examined the historical development of paid care occupations in the United States – why certain jobs have emerged and how particular occupations became linked with gender, race and class both demographically and normatively. And I have worked with collaborators to develop tools to measure the care sector in Massachusetts and in the United States, as a way of understanding its overall impact, its connections to policy, and its interdependence with systems of inequality.
My goal in my next project is to add an international comparative dimension to my overall research agenda. My collaborator Amy Armenia and I want to measure and map the paid care labor force in a range of countries for the purpose of comparing the impact of different policy regimes. For each country we want to ask a series of questions: How many workers work in care jobs? What are those jobs and how are they defined? Are these “good” jobs relative to other opportunities in that country? How are care jobs distributed by race, gender, and immigrant background? At the same time, we will collect information about the policy regimes that impact the organization of care in each country. Eventually our goal is to conduct an analysis that combines quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the impact of policy on the shape of the care labor force (and all of the implications of that).
This project is in its infancy, so in this year we want to begin to explore the literature to identify countries where policy is very different, and explore possible sources of data about various countries.
Possible tasks for student involvement and skills desired in a student partner.
1)    Conduct academic literature search to identify previous research comparing care across international contexts (most of this literature is about unpaid care – we have not so far found anything that compares paid care).
2)    Conduct research in academic literature as well as on publicly available websites to identify major policy differences among countries.
3)    Begin to develop recommendations of countries that would be appropriate for the focus of case studies.
4)    Explore possible sources of quantitative data about the labor force and examine these data sources for comparability.
Skills desired in an undergraduate partner: interest in gender, policy and international context, ability to use library databases to conduct literature searches, familiarity with quantitative data and willingness to learn sources of data (project will at this stage not involve quantitative analysis), ability to work independently.


Gender Wage Gap in Academia
Prof. Cheryl Llewellyn
The goal of this study is to assess the state of the gender wage gap in academia. Despite gains in gender equity, the wage gap persists in most professional fields. In 2015, the American Association for University Women (AAUW) estimates women’s salaries are 21% less than men’s (or put differently, women make 79 cents for every dollar that men make). Though sociologically we understand the wage gap is a systemic and widespread issue, many explanations for the disparity boil down to individual level choices. For example, one common response to the difference between men and women’s incomes is that they choose different professions and subfields. Yet, even when the AAUW controlled for educational attainment and choice of career, there was still a 7% difference between men’s and women’s salaries that was explained only by their gender.  Our study will address these gender wage gap issues specifically in the context of academia. We will assess to what extent the gender wage gap exists in professor salaries and if it varies by geographic location and other institutional factors (public vs. private, for example). Mirroring the AAUW study, we will determine if academic discipline influences salary disparity and if gendered expectations and behaviors (like negotiating skills) produce differential incomes in men and women. 

At this phase in the project, we need an undergraduate research partner to conduct a literature review and to collect initial data for analysis. Specific tasks include:
·      Reviewing literature on the gender wage gap, including writing annotated summaries of relevant articles
·      Identifying target colleges and universities for analysis
·      Collecting information on professor salaries from college or university websites

Skills desired in an undergraduate research partner:
·      Interest in gender equality issues
·      Ability to use academic databases to find journal articles
·      Proficiency in internet research

·      Previous experience with Microsoft Excel preferred

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Interested in Presenting at the UMass Lowell Gender Studies Conference 2016?

UMass Lowell Gender Studies Conference 2016
Celebrating Gender Studies at UMass Lowell

Conference Date: February 18, 2016

Gender Studies at UMass Lowell has a rich history, with diverse course offerings, committed faculty, and energized students. This one-day event will showcase the scholarship and creative activity of faculty and students working on topics related to gender.

UML Undergraduate Student Research: We also seek presentations of exemplary undergraduate research projects related to gender issues. Students should apply with a faculty sponsor. 

UML Faculty and Graduate Student Research: Would you like a venue to share your work on gender issues? Do you have a conference paper you have already presented that you would like to share with your colleagues and students? Are you in the process of developing a paper or presentation and need a space to discuss it? We invite you to submit an abstract to the Gender Studies conference!
  
Please submit proposals of no more than 250 words for papers, posters, performances, and artworks to http://form.jotform.us/form/52776492398170 by December 15, 2015.   Please include the title of your presentation, as well as your department affiliation. Undergraduate student proposals should indicate a faculty sponsor who will help prepare the student for the presentation. We encourage both individual and group presentations.